


faith, hope, and telescopes

by lady_blackwell



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Eventual Annlett, F/F, Fix-It of Sorts, awkward coparenting, so it'll take forever for them to get it together, these two are a mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 15:45:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11992869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_blackwell/pseuds/lady_blackwell
Summary: "There's something about how the light shines in the babe's eyes that prove the existence of a celestial being; or that, at the very least, she deserves a name that reflects the constellations that her father loved so much."(Or, Edmund Hewlett and Anna Strong lose each other, have a daughter, and find each other again. Eventually.)





	1. Prologue

_York City, Spring, 1785_

There are two things Carina Strong knows for certain by the time she’s reached the tender age of five.

The first is that when she asks about her father, her mother always becomes a bit sad.

Mama did not shed any tears when she first asked about her father the previous winter as they walked through the market. Carina had noticed Mr. Simpson comforting his daughter after a fall and Mr. Woodhull - who had been avoided as usual, carrying Thomas on his shoulders and little Georgianna in his arms, and Carina had wondered aloud why she didn’t have a father. Mama had simply taken a deep breath and began walking faster, pulling Carina along with her towards the pub they called home and ignoring the calls of the merchants they were supposed to visit that day.

“Your father was a brave man, my star,” Mama responded later after she had finished reading the myth of Andromeda and Perseus, when Carina was tucked safe into bed with Boötes curled up at her feet. “I did not like him when we first met, but as we grew closer I saw how kind and generous he truly was. He loved to study at the stars, just as you do.”

“What happened to him? Did he love you? Why did he go away? Did he love me? Did I make him go away?”

Mama sighs, then leans forward and presses her lips against Carina’s so hard the little girl thinks the marks on her forehead will be there forever - a sign of just how much Mama loves her, with or without her father there. “Carina, your father died before he knew about you. He went away - I sent him away - because his enemies were trying to destroy him and I loved him far too much to see him hurt. But we could not save him.”

“Would he have loved me?” Carina asks again, terrified and unsure, in a way that sounded too much like Edmund the night she had shattered him completely.

“Yes, dear one. He would have treasured you beyond measure.”

The second thing Carina knows is that whenever she goes out onto the roof of their home or into the nearby meadow at night, or cracks open a new astronomy book one of her mother’s regulars has gifted to her, she can feel her father’s gaze in the stars.


	2. Chapter One

_Five years earlier_

Giving birth is not the most painful experience of Anna Strong’s life.

Physically, she knows she will never go through something this searing again - her insides feel as though they’re being ripped to shreds, and she can’t help the screams that come out of her as Abigail and Benjamin frantically try to turn her child so that the head is facing down and properly engaged for the birth - but even so it cannot top how it felt when she had to lie and tell Edmund that she had never loved him. And it is even worse when the child exiting her body brings sweet relief, when the pain of forcing Edmund away cannot be soothed by simply undergoing an intense physical challenge.

Her child - their child - looks like her father upon birth. Wretched, scrawny, small, red and wrinkly, with Edmund’s wide nose and large forehead offset by her pointed chin and a pair of close-set eyes could have only come from her side of the family, blue-gray ones that Abigail tells her will darken with time. A loud pair of lungs and a colicky disposition completes the picture of imperfection, with Abigail clucking about how this one will almost certainly be a troublemaker as she cleans the mess from the birth.

And Anna, Jesus and Mary help her, falls in love with their daughter the moment the babe’s scream announces her violent arrival into the world.

“I can’t stop looking at her,” Anna remarks hours later to everyone in the room and nobody in particular, “If I stop looking at her, I’m afraid she’ll disappear.”

“You’ll be wishing for her to disappear when she’s waking you up every few hours,” Abigail says gently, and Anna smiles further. Every cry will be a blessing, a gift, one she does not deserve, especially not after what she’d done to her poor daughter’s father.

Behind them, Caleb grunts darkly and Ben hisses at him to hush, snippets of their conversation slowly reaching Anna’s ears.

“Don’t you dare say anything about leaving her in the woods or on a doorstop,” Ben whispers, “She’s a baby. She isn’t going to harm anyone. Her father’s identity doesn’t matter now - it could be anyone. It makes no sense.”

“If Annie’d a had any sense at all, she wouldn’t have let the bastard Major get that damned brat on her in the first place.”

“I heard that,” Anna calls from where she’s sitting, wincing as she turns towards the door to glare at both of them. “And if you hadn’t forced me to go to York City and break the poor man’s heart this all could have been avoided.”

“Do the right thing. Go back to Setauket. Tell everyone the babe is Selah’s; you reunited with him in Philadelphia, or something. Keep being our signal, and lie low,” Caleb answers.

“To hell with Setauket!” Anna shouts, and the babe whimpers in response. After ensuring her daugher is settled at her breast, she turns to the boys and begins again, “I won’t be going back there. Not after everything I’ve been through. Not after what I’ve done.”

Ben sighs, and Anna can feel Caleb’s eyeroll from the other side of the barn. Undeterred, she continues, “I know you want me to be reasonable about this, but reason went out the door a long time ago. There’s no such thing as law and order in love and war, especially in situations such as this one.”

“And what do you suggest we do?” Ben replies, “You can’t just waltz back into camp with a British officer’s child in your arms - you’ll be forced to leave, or worse. God knows there have been enough questions about your pregnancy. And everyone knows that she isn’t Selah’s. They’ve been apart far too long for that,” he adds, glaring at Caleb.

“You can say he forced you,” Caleb says in an attempt to help, “It can give you a backstory as to why you’re in camp, and it’ll -”

“No,” Anna cuts him off quickly. She can’t bear to soil Edmund’s reputation any further, and she won’t allow anyone to soil the memory of that night, just before their wedding, when she had taken advantage of Edmund’s loosened adherence to propriety and cajoled him into her bed. “I’ll...think of something. Ed - Major Hewlett is in Scotland, and can’t possibly return. I can say he’s dead and nobody will be the wiser.”

(It’s a small mercy that Anna doesn’t notice the looks that Abigail, Caleb, and Ben share.)

Ben sighs again, and Caleb grunts in affirmation. “Fine. I can take ya back to camp before dawn, or whenever you’re ready to travel. You ain’t ready to walk back by yourself just yet. I’ll steal a supply wagon,” he finishes, and turns to leave.

“Oh, and Annie?” Caleb says unexpectedly, and Anna jumps in response, “Congratulations. She’s a beaut, like you.”

Anna rewards him with a small, gentle smile. “Thank you, Caleb.”

It’s a clear and cold night outside, and Anna takes a brief moment from staring at her daughter to look up at the stars glittering in the sky. But they are nothing compared to what she can see when she turns to the bundle in her arms. There’s something about how the light shines in the babe’s eyes that prove the existence of a celestial being; or that, at the very least, she deserves a name that reflects the constellations that her father loved so much.

Andromeda has too much weight for such a tiny body to carry. Stella is too much like Selah, and the last thing she wants is for the babe to have any connection to her wayward husband.

“Carina,” Anna murmurs softly, “The keel of Argo Navis, that protected Jason and his crew as they sailed to find the Golden Fleece,” she continues, half-remembering a passage in one of the books she had borrowed from Edmund.

Anna hopes - Anna _prays_ , for the first time in many, many years - their story turns out differently than Jason's.


End file.
